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Canada and Alaska: Skagway

After a day at sea the ship docked at Skagway, a tiny town north of Juneau. Someone told me that Skagway’s population all leave in winter – basically it’s a town set up for tourists and boy, does it feel like it.

There’s one main street with a real wild-west feel, right down to the wooden boardwalks. A lot of the building are either original or restored to the original state, so it’s not like the place is fake, it’s just Alaska-Disney. Everything is very clean and nice, plus the hordes of tourists have almost nowhere to go but from one end to the other, looking in the stores full of jewellery and pyjamas. I don’t know why, of all clothing items, pyjamas are the thing Alaska doubled down on, but it’s hard to find a shop that doesn’t sell them – particularly those long-john/onesie style ones with the flap at the back.

However, it was the nicest weather of the whole cruise, so Mum and I decided to visit the Jewell Gardens, which were a short bus ride away. They were very different to the Burchard Gardens. Smaller, messier and with lots of fruit and vegetables.

Also a glass-blowing workshop. It had a really nice artist-enclave vibe and the cafe had good food (and wine of course). As we were leaving there was a brief shower of rain, despite there being barely a cloud in the sky.

“Alaska’s weird’ said the guy behind the counter when we commented. Which reminds me that I forgot to mention that in Juneau there was a girl in a kimono riding a skateboard down the main street and blowing bubbles the whole way. Fabulous!

The only other noteworthy thing about Skagway was the salmon, which were currently doing their kamikaze run upstream. There are many sad sights in the animal kingdom, and watching thousands of salmon queue for a metre-wide fish ladder so they can struggle towards their death, is definitely one of them. Our bus driver said the smell in town about a month hence is unbelievable as the bodies pile up. Grim but fascinating.